Welcome to you all as we near the end of our first term of 2021.

I think we can all agree that the start of this year in our school communities has been a welcome relief of ‘near normalcy’, which has meant we can all focus clearly on supporting the teaching and learning in our schools.

This week we held our first Board meeting of the year and I would like to share some of the national insights of the group.

• Our immediate past president, Mark Mowbray was awarded ‘life membership’ of APPA by the Minister for Education and Youth, Hon. Alan Tudge. This is well-deserved recognition of Mark’s many years of service and dedication to Catholic education in schools, Associations and now as a Board member of AITSL.

• At this meeting I was able to meet the Minister briefly and share with him some of our ongoing initiatives. We hope to meet with him further in the coming weeks.

• We held a valuable discussion with Mark Grant, CEO of AITSL, around initial teacher education, teacher registration, the Disability Review, and the progression of the reduction of ‘red tape’ for teachers.
• Recent ACPPA media releases have responded to both the launch of the ACU/Deakin University Principal Health and Wellbeing survey, now in its 10^th year and the Ministers speech about “raising the bar’ in education.
• Our latest ACPPA national survey results again provided us with a snapshot of principal engagement with our Association. While we have seen steady trends in good levels of engagement, we now need to look at other ways to motivate Principals to see the benefit of having a voice on national agendas which impact their schools. We hope to put out a summary information page about our results in the coming months for your comment and review.
• As part of our ongoing commitment to Principal Health and Wellbeing, our ACPPAConnect portal has been well received. You can find out more about this initiative further on in TOPICS. We are also exploring some other member services for supporting your wellbeing, which we will share in the coming months.
• Lastly, I urge you to participate actively in our much-anticipated ACPPA research project. This is a key opportunity to have your voice heard about your perspective of Initial Teacher Education and ways to improve it in the future. At no other time in our Association’s history have we been better placed to have an impact on the development of teaching graduates which are the cornerstone of our schools going forward. The details are listed below for your reference.

Regards

Brad Gaynor

ACPPA President